CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE BOYS LOOKED SO DIFFERENT with their hair cut short, thought Madeleine. Luc seemed older, the lean firm planes of his face more prominent. Matthieu, though—the close crop exposed all his childish roundness, the brown trusting eyes and soft cheeks. She could look at him now and see him at five, a chubby charming pest, and the memory brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

“How come they left your hair long?” Matthieu was rubbing his hand back and forth over the dark carpet on his head, fascinated with its bristly softness.

Madeleine knew why. Because exotic foreign princess slaves sell better with long red-blond curls, that was why. She also knew why she and Luc had been chained by the ankle to their heavy iron bedsteads, on opposite sides of the room so that at the full length of the chain they could touch hands, but no more. Because exotic foreign princess slaves sell better when no other man has touched them. Still, for now they were better off than on the ship, and for that she was grateful.

The room, with only a narrow slit of a window, a single lamp and a solid wood door, was every bit as dark as the hold of the ship had been. And it was hot. But it was dry and clean and, blessedly, so were they.

Matthieu had looked so scared when, only a short while after they had climbed the narrow stone stairs to their cell, guards had come and taken him and Luc away. This is it, Madeleine had thought, her heart a frozen stone in her chest. The last I will ever see him.

Then she had been taken as well, by two silent armed women, to an outdoor enclosure where her clothes were stripped off her and tossed onto a fire and she was scrubbed from head to foot with a stinging pungent soap that made her pale skin bloom into red blotches. And her hair—no wonder the boys’ hair had been cut! After coating her head in a thick oily concoction that reeked of herbs and lamp oil, it had taken the women most of the afternoon to comb, with painstaking thoroughness, the bugs and nits out of each strand of hair and finally to wash out the greasy mess. When at last she was brought back, Matthieu had hurtled into her arms. Madeleine understood what he didn’t say: He had thought she was gone for good.

“Why did they bother to clean us up like this?” Madeleine was changing the subject, but she truly wondered. The long tunics they had been given were rough but clean, and so were the thin pallets on their bedsteads. Her skin and scalp felt almost sunburned from its harsh treatment, but already the fierce constant itching of wrists and ankles and neck she had endured on the ship was subsiding.

Luc shrugged. “Lots of those pirates were out there getting cleaned up too. They didn’t burn their clothes, but they dumped ‘em all into big vats of boiling water, and they scrubbed ‘emselves raw just like us. Maybe Turga doesn’t like bedbugs in his house.”

A heavy tread and the sound of a key opening the door’s padlock interrupted them. As the door was pulled back, a thick aroma wafted into the room. Meat and spices—something sharp that licked at the nostrils—and a sweet fruity...Madeleine’s mouth filled with saliva and her stomach cramped sharply. She knew she must have the same hawklike intensity on her own face that she saw on Luc’s and Matthieu’s as they stared at the large tray carried in by yet another stranger. They barely noticed him leaving as they clustered around it.

“What is this stuff?” asked Luc. It didn’t look like anything from home; that was certain. Fist-sized packets of something wrapped in steamed leaves of some kind, heaps of a tiny bright-yellow grain, shriveled orange-red chunks that Madeleine hoped were dried fruit, greens so dark they were almost black.

Matthieu bent over the tray and took a deep fervent sniff. “It’s food, Luc. Real food that a person would actually want to eat.”

There was very little talk after that. They fell on their dinner, and until it was gone Madeleine did not think once about slave auctions or home or the chain on her ankle. She just ate.

BREAKFAST WAS NOT so sumptuous, but it was wholesome and plentiful: bread and fruit and a bowl of creamy-looking stuff that was too tart for pudding, too liquid for cheese and too cold for soup. They debated over this for some time until Matthieu solved the problem by scooping a generous layer onto his bread and wolfing it down. It was good that way, they agreed—odd, but good.

But as the day wore on, the novelty of being clean and well-fed was no longer enough to fend off reality. Good food, however cheering, would not change their fate. The chain rubbed and dragged at Madeleine’s leg, no matter how she sat or lay, making an angry red weal around her ankle. The dim shadows pressed on her—she was smothered by this constant confinement in constricted dark spaces. And the future was still a lurking terror. Madeleine fingered a tress of golden hair, let it twine around her finger like a morning glory. It would turn to the light like an eager plant, if only there were any. Her hair had felt rough and dry after the delousing, but that morning one of the silent women had come again and dressed it with a light fragrant oil and then brushed it into glossy health. She had made Madeleine rub the oil into her skin too. It was not a kindness; Madeleine understood that. They just wanted to keep her beautiful.

When the sun had lowered in the sky enough to pierce directly through the window, Madeleine stood and walked into the stream of light. She wanted to bathe her face in sunshine, to let the light penetrate and warm the dark hollow of her heart. But the chain brought her up short, so that she could not turn into the light, but could only stand with her back to the window and let the sunshine play on her head and shoulders.

That was where she stood when the key grated harshly in the lock and the door was pulled open.

Madeleine jumped, startled by the sudden intrusion. She had heard no footsteps—and a quick look confirmed that Matthieu and Luc were also taken by surprise.

Then she saw who it was, and her stomach tightened into a knot of fear.

SHE COULD NOT know it, but for one brief moment when he entered the cell, the sight of Madeleine made the man known as Rhus doubt his course. Backlit in a shaft of brilliance, her hair a golden blazing halo, she looked to his fevered brain more like a spirit messenger of the sun than a slave girl. But then she took a hasty step away, and the fire dimmed back into human hair and flesh.

It was a risky move, stealing the key and coming here, but he was done for anyway—had been the moment he hurried off with that painted whore instead of heeding Zhirak’s shouted recall to the ship. His tyrant uncle could rail at him all he liked, as he had railed at Rhus’s late return. It made no difference to him now. In the meantime, Rhus meant to satisfy his appetites while he still could. And high on his list of appetites was this girl, who had caught his eye her first day on board and tormented his thoughts ever since.

Sliding his long knife from its sheath, he backed first the young lad and then the meddlesome older boy into their respective corners. He laid the blade flat and hard against their lips and mimed the cut throat he would give them if they made a sound. Then he swaggered back to the young miss, pressed now against the wall as if it could swallow her up.

Oh, and wasn’t she the pretty thing, pale and delicate as a new moon and hair to drive a man wild. Only the wide blue eyes unnerved him, like the sky itself accusing him.

She’ll close ‘em soon enough, he thought, and felt his lips flare across his face in a greedy smile. Her mouth he would close for her.

MADELEINE COULD NOT KEEP herself from shrinking away from the Fox, but she knew it was useless. She could go nowhere, do nothing. She didn’t even have the option of trying to fight back—it was Matthieu he would kill, not her, and that was a risk she could not take.

The man’s eyes swept her up and down, glittery and wild, and the narrow lips peeled back from his teeth.

Like he wants to eat me, thought Madeleine. Her stomach lurched, disgust and fear rising like vomit up her throat.

She didn’t mean to make that pathetic frightened mew as the tattooed hand reached for her, but the sound slipped out and that was what spurred on Matthieu.

“Stop it! Leave her be!” he yelled and launched himself at the Fox.

“Matthieu, don’t!” Madeleine shouted, but the Fox was faster. He had Matthieu in the corner, his knife pinned across his throat. Matthieu’s eyes were huge, his face drained of color.

“Matthieu, you must stay quiet.” Madeleine forced herself to talk quietly, though her voice shook with brimming tears. “Whatever happens, don’t move. Don’t say anything.” Don’t look, she wanted to add, but the Fox was already turning back to her, his sharp cheekbones flushed red with anger, sweat starting out on his forehead.

He slid his knife lingeringly alongside her throat and nestled it behind her ear before plunging his other hand into her hair, grabbing onto a fistful and pulling her hard against his body.

He trembled as he pressed against her and fumbled at her clothes. The hard hands, when they found and grasped at the bare skin under her loose tunic, were so hot she felt seared. His face too, seemed to throb with heat against her cheek. He pushed her to the ground, and when she resisted he slapped her, hard and fast, on the side of her head, and then brought his face so close they were nose to nose. Breathing heavily, he pressed the knife into her neck as he barked out an angry command. A stream of spittle escaped his lips. Madeleine smelled something awful on his breath, something swampy and putrid, and she gagged and flinched back.

Luc’s voice shattered the air. Not bothering with words, he screamed. It cut through the despairing silence in the cell and blared like a shrieking trumpet into the hallway. Madeleine heard him suck in a breath, and then the clarion blared again, louder than any voice she had ever heard.

Blared, and held, and was cut short into a bubbly gurgle, and was gone. Only Matthieu’s voice, a strangled bleating whimper, disturbed the room.

No. Please, great gods, any god, please no. Turning her head to look was like fighting a strong ocean current. How could it take so much effort and will, simply to turn one’s head?

Luc lay spread-eagled on the floor, his throat gaping, blood pouring out in a red sheet. Eyes blind and staring. Gone.

The Fox wiped his blade against his backside and turned back to Madeleine. She didn’t see him—she was pulled into a tight ball, sobbing in breathless searing gasps of pain.

RHUS TURNED BACK to the girl—and stopped.

Heavy boots pounded up the stone stairway. Curse the gods and the gods’ whelps...the string of disjointed curses came out in a thick mumble, along with another strand of spit. Something wrong with his tongue. He wiped at his lips, swallowed painfully and tried to think. There was no time for the girl—the mouthy little bastard had buggered that up. Now he would have to make up some excuse for killing him, and quick.